"Now you can do stuff that you could already do before, but you can do it with your phone. What it takes to make that work is incredible—venture capitalists have poured $672 million combined into Wag and Rover!—but the consumer impact is small. Instead of taking a number off a bulletin board in a coffee shop and calling Eric to walk Rufus, you hit a few buttons on your phone and Eric comes over."
The above is a very cynical interpretation. What it fails to capture is the idea that incremental benefits multiplied by millions of people is a huge NET benefit to society as a whole.
An anecdote: Arrived at the airport the other day and the baggage claim was backed up by about 30 minutes. While 30 minutes is not a big deal, multiply it across the 300 hundred or so passengers on the flight, and you'll get about 6 ENTIRE HUMAN DAYS were wasted due to an operational inefficiency.
But hey, who needs uber when it only takes a few minutes to hail a cab? ;)
The above is a very cynical interpretation. What it fails to capture is the idea that incremental benefits multiplied by millions of people is a huge NET benefit to society as a whole.
An anecdote: Arrived at the airport the other day and the baggage claim was backed up by about 30 minutes. While 30 minutes is not a big deal, multiply it across the 300 hundred or so passengers on the flight, and you'll get about 6 ENTIRE HUMAN DAYS were wasted due to an operational inefficiency.
But hey, who needs uber when it only takes a few minutes to hail a cab? ;)